ABSTRACT
The Provisional Irish Republican Army’s (PIRA) motto, Tiocfaidh ar la (Our day will come), would seem to demonstrate the sense of inevitability that many Irish republicans feel towards the eventual achievement of their goal; an end to British rule in Northern Ireland and the political unification of the island of Ireland. Yet the past twenty-five years of PIRA activity reveal that republican faith in the historical tide is not so certain. Not certain enough for republicans to believe that they simply need do nothing and that one day the wave of the future will fall to the irresistible idea of Irish unity. For republicans, the goal of unity is a vision for which plans need to be made, campaigns organised and, in particular, armed force employed. Today, republican policy marches on a wide front, encompassing electoral participation, economic and social agitation and propaganda. But the focus of republican action has remained the unswerving commitment to the armed struggle. How the republican movement came to see the practice of military force as an effective instrument of policy is the subject of this study.
